“Wait.” Raphael held her back when she would’ve headed down to where she’d last seen the blue-winged angel. “I will go first—there are things here you have no hope of defeating.”
“Go.” She wasn’t stupid, no matter that worry for Illium had her frantic. The angel had become one of her people, someone she’d fight to the death to save. “Be careful Archangel.” Because if she loved Illium, what she felt for Raphael was beyond words, beyond her ability to describe. A huge, powerful, near-painful emotion, it simply was.
“Death holds no allure for me, Elena.” The power of him cut against his skin, a cold white fire. “Not when I have yet to sate my hunger for you.” Turning, he walked not to where she’d last glimpsed Illium, but into the bowels of the shrine. “He came in here.”
Following, her entire body on alert, she paused by a long, pitted column that bore flecks of what appeared to be rust-colored pigment and checked in the shadows around its side. Seeing nothing, she continued on, the rustle of her and Raphael’s wings the only—“Wait.” Gripping Raphael’s arm, she stopped him when he would’ve gone farther into the depths of the building.
When he glanced back at her, she leaned forward to brush the dirt off a cracked but still-standing column using her fingers. “Do you see?” It was a whisper.
Raphael reached out to trace the shape of the dragon carved into the eroded surface. “This should not be part of this shrine. Everything about it is wrong.”
“Do you think ... ?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps she is simply remembered as legend in these parts.” Turning again, he walked a few steps into what had been the main room—the roof of which was now almost entirely gone, the sky covered with a filigree of green—and stopped three feet in. “Illium.” Bending, he picked up one startling blue feather edged in silver.
There was a drop of crimson on the very tip.
Half an hour later, they’d combed every single inch of the shrine and the surrounding area and found no further sign of Illium. “You said your mother liked beautiful things,” she said to Raphael as they stood beside the gnarled old root she’d vaulted over not long ago.
Raphael gave a slow nod. “And Illium is very much a man many have desired to collect over the years.”
“He’s not helpless despite the fact that he appears decorative, so that’ll be a surprise.” Folding her arms, she turned toward the being for whom she would walk into hell itself. “You’re also far stronger than you were when she last saw you—you can reach Illium.”
Raphael looked at her for a long, long moment before raising his hand to touch her cheek. “Such faith in me, Elena.”
She closed her fingers over his wrist, his pulse strong and steady under her touch. “I know your heart, Archangel. It gives you more power than you believe.”
Raphael felt a tug of urgency at Elena’s words, a flare of understanding that he couldn’t quite grasp. It was tempting to chase, but experience told him that would only send the whisper of thought further into hiding. Allowing it to fade away for the moment, he focused on the facts at hand. “She took Illium for a reason.”
Elena’s eyes glittered with intelligence, that thin ring of silver luminous in the muted forest light. “A warning.”
“That may be.” However, his mother wasn’t like other mothers. “Or it may be that she grows impatient.”
“She wants you to find her?” Elena frowned and parted her lips ... but the words never came, blades gleaming in her hands even as Raphael sensed the intruder at his back and turned.
A shift in the air, as if something was trying to take shape. For a fraction of a second, he thought it was Caliane, but then the formless being turned into an angel with hair of ice and irises of a strange pearlescent shade that almost melded into the whites of her eyes, giving her the look of an eerie blindness. Her wings were the last part of her body to appear, a silken dove gray that was as exquisite as Lijuan was dangerous.
“Raphael.” Her voice held the same faint echo he’d sensed before, as if there were other voices within her, ghosts trying to reach out. Trying to scream.
“What are you doing here, Lijuan?”
The Archangel of China smiled, and it was nothing even remotely of the world. What Lijuan had become, what she’d “evolved” into, was a nightmare even the Cadre couldn’t quite comprehend. But Raphael understood. Because he’d looked into the face of madness as a child, felt it touch him with featherlight fingers . . . and knew it might one day crash over him in an overwhelming wave.
Elena’s wing brushed his in a silent caress, as if she’d read his thoughts. As if she was reminding him of her promise.
“I won’t let you fall.”
Lijuan’s eyes flickered over Elena’s wings, and there was a faint avarice in her gaze. The most ancient of archangels had a fondness for the exotic and unusual—unfortunately, she liked to pin them up as trophies on her walls. “Your hunter’s wings are exceptional. Unique. Did you know that, Raphael? In all my millennia of existence, I’ve never seen wings like hers . . . or like the young one’s.”
The “young one” was Illium—and Lijuan’s fascination with him was such that Raphael made sure Illium was rarely in her vicinity, and never, ever alone. “You did not come here to talk of wings.”
“In a sense.” Settling her own wings, Lijuan looked around with those eyes that appeared blind. “I remember this place. It was an ancient shrine known only to its disciples. Legend said they worshipped a sleeping dragon.” A shake of her head, her hair blowing back in a wind that touched nothing else. “I didn’t pay it much mind.”
Because a goddess, Raphael thought, had little to fear from small mortal gods. But now, he thought, looking at that ageless visage, she did know fear. Lijuan had evolved ... but Caliane had been millennia upon millennia older than her when she lay down to Sleep. Who was to say that his mother could not vanquish the nightmare that was the Archangel of China?
Lijuan’s eyes settled on Raphael once more. “You always loved your mother,” she said in a sweetness of words that did nothing to hide the death that clung to her like a putrid shade. “So it is unfair of us to expect you to find and eliminate the problem.”
“You are here to kill my mother.” It was no surprise, but he wondered at her speaking to him of it again.
“I am here to kill a monster.”
31
Elena had been certain where she stood on the whole Caliane situation the instant the archangel took Illium, but now, looking at Lijuan, she reassessed. Did your mother ever reanimate the dead?
Raphael didn’t betray even by the barest flicker of an eye-lash that he’d heard her, but his response was instant. No.
An absolute answer, but she heard the things Raphael didn’t say, felt the tendrils of an ancient darkness curl around her heart. Because whatever form Caliane’s madness had taken, it had turned her own son against her. What did she do? It was the one thing she’d never asked, for she understood that mothers could be hated and loved at the same time.
She sang thousands upon thousands into slavery, until they saw nothing but her, until they would have slit their own children’s throats and walked over their bruised and battered bodies if she asked.
Elena swallowed, watching Lijuan as she turned to walk across the remnants of the sand garden, her wings so flawless in color and formation that it was impossible not to admire them even knowing that their purity was a lie, hiding the truth of Lijuan’s nature. Did she give that order?
No. My mother was once the Guardian of the Innocent and some part of her remembered that responsibility. But she gave other orders.
For a moment, she thought that was all he was going to say on the subject, but then the sea slammed against her senses. She almost staggered under the force of it, only then realizing how rigidly he was holding on to his control.
She sang the adult populations of two thriving cities into walking into the Mediterranean until they drowned, because they were about to go to war. In her mind, it was a better option than the death and devastation war would’ve caused.
I have never heard such quiet as I heard in those cities. The children were shocked and mute, and in spite of the care we gave them, many died of inexplicable sicknesses over the next year. Keir has always maintained that they died of such heartsorrow as immortals would never know.
Lijuan finished her exploring at that instant and turned to face them again. “She does not Sleep here.” It was a definitive statement.
“You will forgive me if I do not take your word for that.” Raphael’s response held the same chill Elena had sensed in his mental voice.
Lijuan smiled that damn creepy smile that made spidery fingers crawl up Elena’s back. “You think I covet your mother’s power, but you are wrong. Caliane’s”—a massive gust of wind that pushed Elena’s hair off her face—“power drove her mad. I enjoy my sanity.”
Whether Lijuan was sane was a question of interpretation, but one thing was clear. “She can hear us.”
Lijuan’s eyes shifted to Elena. “Michaela doesn’t understand what you see in your hunter, Raphael.” She drifted closer, too close for Elena’s comfort. “But I do.”
Elena held her ground. Lijuan was batshit crazy as far as she was concerned, but according to Raphael, the oldest of the archangels also had a weird code of honor. She wouldn’t kill Elena for speaking as other archangels might—but she’d strike out if she thought Elena wasn’t treating her with the respect demanded by her status. “To be honest, I’m not sure half the time myself,” she said, keeping her voice steady, though her every instinct screamed at her to get the fuck away from the creature in front of her.
Elena.
Hush, let me talk to the crazy lady.
A flicker of his wing and she wondered if she’d almost surprised her archangel into a smile.
“Life,” Lijuan whispered, reaching out a hand as if to touch Elena’s face.
Elena took a step back just as Raphael moved to stand slightly in front of her.
Laughing, Lijuan dropped her hand. “As I said, life. There is a flame within you, hunter, one that is rare. So he keeps you close, though you weaken him more with every day that passes.”
Elena felt the heart-blow slice home, piercing her through and through. She knew Raphael thought it a fair trade, but she didn’t think so. If he was hurt because of her, she’d never forgive herself. Even the possibility terrified her. But there was no room for self-pity here, in front of an archangel who’d let her reborn feast on the flesh of the newly dead. “Do you know where she’s taken Illium?” she asked, stepping up to stand beside Raphael once again. I’m your consort, remember? she said when he shot her a hard glance.
I would never forget, Guild Hunter. Cool words, but they were as good as a caress to her.
“I sense a hum of power here,” Lijuan said, “but Caliane is strong. Her tentacles pervade this entire region.”
